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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138880">Can't Help (Falling in Love)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration'>ponderinfrustration</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tender Increments [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera &amp; Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dancing, F/M, Fluff, Ireland, mild sexual references</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:49:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,153</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138880</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Christine is home from Portugal for Halloween, and she learns something she never knew before about Erik.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tender Increments [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1232849</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Can't Help (Falling in Love)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It's so long since I wrote fic that I decided to write fluff fic for my birthday while I'm waiting for a documentary on Terence MacSwiney to start (a slightly-obscured icon of Irish history). Note that this fic takes place in 2020, but I decided long ago that it is an alternate 2020 without The Thing That Begins With A P. There is no such thing in the Tinder 'verse. </p>
<p>This fic was also inspired by the cover of 'Can't Help Fallin' In Love' by Lick the Tins, which adds a delightful Irish dance tune to the Elvis song and makes it 10 times better.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They have decided on an election detox. This election detox includes not watching the news, because even though the election is an American one, it seems to be all over the media. So when Christine flies in for Halloween this year, she and Erik agree early on (after the first hug, the first kiss, the first, <em>God I’ve missed you</em>), that they are not going to watch the news.</p>
<p>It is an easy decision to take. Anything important she’ll get a notification about. Anything else she can live without knowing, at least for a few days. She will not have what time she has with Erik, in the midst of both of their research, tainted by outside considerations.</p>
<p>These few days are for her, and for him, and for their friends.</p>
<p>And they make the most of them, they do. Pumpkin carving (Erik, it seems, has had idle hands in her absence and carved no less than ten pumpkins in the week before she arrived, and composed two pieces that he plays for her on her first night back, while she lies on the couch wrapped up in his dressing gown and a blanket), and wine, and walks by the canal, wrapped in their big coats and scarves to keep the chill at bay. The evening sky, a blue that is still light but fading at the edges, the purple at the horizon, and her hand snakes into his, their breath misting in the air.</p>
<p><em>God I missed you, </em>unspoken, the slight pressure in his touch.</p>
<p>(He was promised a view of the aurora, but Maynooth is too far south. He only saw Neowise on one night, and he was too tired to travel to Tara for the best view. And it rained every night when the Perseids were to be at their best. But a dry Halloween with frost in the air – this is what his best memories are made of. That they can still have this feels too great to speak of.)</p>
<p>Last night they cuddled while she caught up on geo-blocked history documentaries, and Erik even managed to stay awake for the footage of Terence MacSwiney cutting a dashing figure in 1920, and when eventually he dozed, his long legs twined with hers, his head heavy against her shoulder, she brushed back his hair and kissed him and cradled him close, and felt the tugging in her heart, that they must ever be parted.</p>
<p>(Only for a little while, a handful of years, for them to progress their separate research, but then—Then.)</p>
<p>(She loves Portugal. Loves poking through archives, deciphering papers and handwriting untouched in decades, but the missing of Erik—The missing of Erik, sometimes, makes it difficult to remember what she loves in research.)</p>
<p>(She thinks of Muriel MacSwiney, and how, when her husband lay dying on hunger strike for his beliefs, while he was feeling guilty for all he was putting her through, she kissed him and reminded him that those weeks were the longest they had been able to stay together since they were married. And for all Christine worries for Erik’s health, wishes they could spend more time together, she is grateful, too, that they do not have to know such a situation as that.)</p>
<p>Tomorrow night they will be dressing up, will be going out. As if they are first-year undergrads, not PhD candidates who should be past such adventures.</p>
<p>She’s missed dancing in his arms, missed kissing him beneath the streetlights. Missed stumbling home through the frost and his giggle, his hand tightening around hers, to keep them both from slipping. To be close to him, to feel his fingers on her bare skin, the weight of him upon her—</p>
<p>They have always been careful, with each other. But having been parted for so long, all she wants is to be as close to him as she can, to love him as much as she can.</p>
<p>To cram the months of aching for each other into a handful of days. An impossible feat, but they will do what they can.</p>
<p>Tomorrow night, out on the town. Last night, in each other’s arms. And tonight—</p>
<p>Tonight she is watching Erik, dancing a hornpipe in the middle of the small apartment, and all she can do is stare, stare at how he holds himself, his closed eyes, his arms rigid down by his sides, his head unmoving even as his legs fly beneath him, the clicking of his shoes off the floor, his leaps into the air and still holding himself steady and they have been together for three years, but she never knew he did Irish dancing until now.</p>
<p>All she can do is stare, even as Nadir beside her is grinning fondly. “He won medals, like, he was good at it,” he says, and she nearly chokes on her Coke.</p>
<p>“He what?”</p>
<p>“Oh yeah, when we were in school. He gave it up after his lung collapsed, and we heard about his condition, but before that he was big into it.”</p>
<p>And there is a check of fear in her heart, but she knows Erik is as well as he can be, knows he had a scan two weeks ago and there is nothing to worry about, and she has faith that Erik wouldn’t be dancing, now, if he didn’t think he was up to it.</p>
<p>And she will admit, this song has always been a great one to dance to, Lick the Tins superior to Elvis, and she would get up to dance, but she is happy to watch Erik, his flopping hair and the frenetic energy of him, the fiddle and pipes and drums and how he moves in time with them, his long legs, and her throat is dry, but she has never seen him dance like this before and something inside of her wills her to remember this, to remember him in this moment, exactly as he is.</p>
<p>And she will, and she must, and when the song stops, in the sudden silence of the room all she can hear is his heavy breathing, his stillness a contrast to only a moment ago, and she sets down the Coke and throws herself into his arms. The tightening of his embrace around her, his heart pounding through his chest and he’s laughing, laughing and kissing her and laughing, and she presses against him and looks up into his grinning face, the bright gold-hazel of his eyes, the beading sweat at the corner of his mouth that she wants to stretch up and kiss away.</p>
<p>But she does not. Instead she grins, and cups the back of his head, and says, “You should have told me you could do that.”</p>
<p>She feels the rumbling of his laugh in his chest. “I wanted to keep it a surprise.”</p>
<p>And when his lips meet hers, there is no more talk of surprises.</p>
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